Regarding catastrophic collision with sharp edge, I think these tires will be susceptible as well. If it's enough of a bump to "bottom out", it's going to dent the rim.
Also, your comment about potholes reminded me of a time that I was driving with a friend and we hit a pothole and got a flat. My friend was driving and looked a the flat front tire and said "I'm glad I have a spare". I look at the flat back tire and said "Unless you have two, we're still going to need assistance."
I did this one time. Ran over a pothole and bottomed out. As I'm replacing my front tire I look to my rear tire and see that it's also flat. That wasn't even the cherry on top. At that point I had my front wheel off and tried putting on the spare anyways.
I had a Kia Stinger GT and the GT version has Brembo brakes which have a much larger caliper than the regular version. Well QA at Kia never thought to check if their spare tire actually fits with the larger caliper. Spoiler alert: it doesn't.
The manual stated something about putting the spare on a rear, then, taking the good rear and putting it in the front.
The rotors on the rear were smaller and could accommodate the spare. Obviously a moot point if one has two blown tires.
That was a rough day.
Not sure. Makes me think that it would be a good idea to make the inner rim diameter smaller, and have another layer of spokes/spings with a higher compression force.
Filling tires at too high pressure can lead to blowouts.
Filling tires under pressure leads to degraded performance handling issues potentially causing accidents in some cases.
A more consistent normalized baseline performing tire, even if louder, would be welcome. This would end the seasonal low pressure tires in winter due to the cold and higher pressure during summer due to the heat.
One time we got new tires and went on vacation and parked our car in an outside parking garage in a hot summer for a week, we came back and the side facing the sun the tires had exceeded PSI max and started to buckle. I am sure we have all seen those videos of people standing over tires and overfilling them leading to essentially a pressure bomb. Managing air pressure in tires can be problematic, airless tires are a welcome innovation.
Background noise can lead to fatigue, which can lead to crashes. I have no idea of the overall impact (pardon the pun) of this, compared to increased safety of (louder) tyre performance, but probably worth considering.
> Managing air pressure in tires can be problematic, airless tires are a welcome innovation.
True, but modern cars have inbuilt pressure sensors, and these can be retro-fitted relatively cheaply.
I lose 1-2 tires per year due to sidewall damage from potholes. Lucky for me, the Discount Tire road hazard warranty covers that. Costs me $16/tire each time this happens.
It's so bad that I had to replace the factory wheels with aftermarket ones that wouldn't get bent from the impact.
Of course, I didn't consider changing the wheel size when I did that. I should have gone with 15" wheels and a higher ratio tire to get the same effective outside radius with more tire between the wheel and the road.
Oh well, replacing this car soon anyways as now I am in need of ground clearance and AWD due to having moved to where roads do not always exist year round.